The Democrat-led U.S. border town of El Paso, Texas is ending its effort to send illegal immigrants on buses to “sanctuary cities” and is forcing Venezuelan migrants back to Mexico.
A spokesperson for the city of El Paso told Reuters that the bus program is “no longer needed.” Reportedly, El Paso alone bused about 10,600 migrants to New York and 3,200 to Chicago since August, following the lead of GOP Gov. Greg Abbott (TX).
The abrupt half to El Paso’s bus program comes as a result of a policy from President Joe Biden to expel Venezuelans back to Mexico until the COVID-19 pandemic-era policy Title 42.
This week, the New York Post reported that the White House pressured the Democratic Mayor of El Paso, Texas to not declare a state of emergency over the city’s illegal immigration crisis over concerns that it would make President Biden “look bad.”
According to the report, three of the El Paso City Council’s eight members urged Mayor Oscar Leeser to issue a state of emergency declaration over the thousands of migrants flooding the city’s shelters and hotels. But, Leeser admitted during a private phone call last month that the Biden White House instructed him not to, an official told The Post.
“He told me the White House asked him not to,” Councilmember Claudia Rodriguez told The Post. And, Leeser reportedly told Rodriguez he would declare a state of emergency only “if things got worse,” but did not specify what that would look like.
United States Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), whose congressional district covers miles of rural areas and border towns near Mexico, told The Post he’s heard similar stories from other El Paso city officials.
“It is a sleight of hand what the administration is doing — pressuring the local government to not issue a declaration of emergency, to say as if everything is going okay,” Gonzales said, adding that the White House has done “the same thing in other parts of my district.”
On Friday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in an interview on 1010 WINS that he’s “happy as heck” the city’s shelters won’t be filling up quickly with migrants from the border. Townhall covered how Adams previously stated that it would cost $1 billion to care for the migrants and threatened legal action against the states sending them. The city opened up a “tent city” migrant shelter this week.
“We were really concerned,” Adams said in the interview. “We had a really unpredictable [Texas] governor. We had a mayor in El Paso that was sending anywhere from 10 buses a day to New York. It was predicted that we could have 100,000 people here.”
“We were hoping that they would listen, and they did,” Adams said. “And now we’re seeing a small amount of buses. The mayor of El Paso communicated with our office that he won’t be sending any more buses.”